


Symbiogenesis

by tristesses



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Body Horror, Forced Body Cohabitation, Forced Pregnancy, Gen, Pregnancy, Science Fiction, Telepathy, Traumatic Labor, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 15:13:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8213750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/pseuds/tristesses
Summary: Bala would give anything not to die.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArgylePirateWD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgylePirateWD/gifts).



They’re losing.

Bala doesn’t want to admit it, can hardly stomach the thought, but it’s true—this battle is lost. Her CO is shouting over the comm, voice crackling, the signal corrupted by the planet’s radiation— _all troops fall back!_ _Get back to the ship!—_ and all around her humans are dying, strangled by Maeshi plant-symbiotes or burnt by Maeshi lasers or simply fallen, facedown in the muck. Bala tries to obey, but her whole suit is on the fritz, not just comms; the bodyshield is failing. She can feel it buzzing on her skin, sending little shocks through her body when it should just be a comfortable hum. And when it does fail—

Bala struggles to her feet and turns toward her ship. The malfunctioning suit is hindering her movements, making her slow and clumsy. She steadfastly refuses to think of what will happen if the suit breaks down. (The poison air eating through her skin, dissolving her lungs—)

In front of her, a strange shimmer, iridescent in the sickly yellow haze of the planet’s atmosphere. Bala stumbles back, but the shimmer is spreading, solidifying, circling her with a clear sense of purpose until she’s trapped inside an ectoplasmic bubble. She screams, screams and fires her phaser at the Maeshi’s transparent flesh, but it does nothing.

_This is how I’m going to die. This is how I'm going to die. I don’t want this, I’ll do anything—_

And in her head, an alien presence, a crawling sensation that makes Bala want to claw her brains out. It’s voiceless, wordless, but _curiou_ _s_ as it sifts through her mind, absorbing her terror, examining her brain. Bala’s voice gives out and she starts to retch, and the bodyshield gives its final flicker and dies, and—

 **Anything?** the presence asks.

 _Please, anything—_  

…

 

There’s something on her skin.

It’s coating her body, a sticky gel-like substance that runs a few degrees hotter than human core temperature. She’s alone under the yellow sky—alone and _alive_ _._ No suit, but not dead. What—

There was something in her head, something _thinking_. A Maeshi without a symbiont, enveloping her in a sphere, a question and an affirmative.

“Oh fuck,” she whispers, and looks down at herself. Her body, familiar as always, but with a sheen flashing blue and purple in the light. “Oh fuck, oh _fuck—_ ”

The sheen pulses, contracts. It ripples across her body, sticky filaments caressing her skin—the Maeshi claiming its territory. In her mind, that unnatural presence twists and stretches, expanding, until there is an _other_ in her head, a consciousness not her own. Human minds are not meant to handle this _—_

 **No fear** , the presence tells her. **Joy-help-exist. Calm-live.**

Its communication—more like the impression of concepts than actual words—carries with it an edge of curiosity, twining around Bala’s frightand damping it down. It’s done without her will, as smoothly as a drug, but she doesn’t _want_ it, she wants to feel her terror and not let the Maeshi _alter_ her like this.

 **No fear** , it repeats.

She’s terrified anyway.

“What...” Bala’s voice trails off, raspy for lack of water. She licks her lips and tries again. “Why am I alive? What do you want from me?”

 **Protect** , the presence murmurs in her mind. **Protect-bargain-anything. Life.**

Then it sends her an image, a concept too vague and broad to be expressed in words: a sense of newness, of rawness, of flesh and connection. Creation. Conception.

“Oh god,” Bala whispers, the pieces falling together.

 **Yes**. The presence is pleased.

“No! I can’t—” The sticky film pulses against her, heat lapping like waves against her skin. Tight on her limbs, taut over her stomach, oozing to the few places it hasn’t already covered. Her lips, the spaces between her fingers and toes, between her legs. “I don’t want—”

 **Bargain** , the presence insists. **Bargain-life-create**.

Bala tries to protest, but she no longer has a choice.

Like lava, the symbiont flows across her skin, slowing her movements—when she tries to move her arms, all she can manage is a thin squelch as the suction of the Maeshi tissue is released. She tries to scrape it off with her teeth when it reaches her lips, but it only oozes around her molars as if that was its goal. Then her tongue, a hot and sticky fluid, then _down her throat—_

And elsewhere, it creeps up her legs, inexorable, slipping through her clenched thighs and— _inside—_ so hot, enough to turn her skin red, and she can feel it dripping down her throat and coalescing in her stomach. And in her abdomen, she can feel it moving, filling her up, and when she looks down, she can see the swell of her belly getting rounder as the symbiont forces more of itself inside her.

 **Calm** , the Maeshi instructs in her head. **Create.**

Bala falls to her knees, then her back, writhing in the dirt. No blue or black skies here, suffocating in this yellow haze. Deep inside her, she can feel the Maeshi tissue undulating, pulsing, and she can _see_ it under her flesh, questing tendrils shifting like ropes.

Then, suddenly, _pain,_ like dozens of lampreys biting at her uterine wall _—_

 **Feed-implant-create** , the Maeshi tells her, a general impression of sympathy carried in its thoughts. **Patience-calm-endure.**

 _This is how I’m going to die,_ Bala thinks, but she knows it won't let her.

 

...

 

Bala’s heels drum against the dirt. Her back arches, her body enveloped in the glistening flesh of the Maeshi. A scream flutters in her throat, but it’s choked back by the symbiont. Body twisting, she doubles over, grabbing at her abdomen, smacking the flesh there in a futile attempt to make the pain go away, dislodge the little lamprey mouths, _anything,_ but it doesn’t work. The symbiont fetuses will eat her alive; she can see them writhing, distending her belly. The Maeshi consumes her, uses her, _won’t let her die_.

 **Endure** , it reminds her. 

…

 

Then she doesn’t have to endure any longer.

Between her legs, the Maeshi tendrils slip out. Her stomach clenches, cramps; flat on her back, legs spread, she groans and _pushes._ Heavy, wet, living tissue slithers out of her; she can feel it curling against her thighs.

At last, it’s over. The Maeshi withdraws from her mouth, frees her limbs, although it stays wrapped around her torso like an organic bodyshield. Bala props herself up on her elbows and peers between her legs.

 _I helped make that,_ she thinks, looking at the half-liquid pool the Maeshi child has chosen to form. Little tendrils break the surface of the pool, waving. Somewhere along the line, she lost her fear; in fact, she seems to have lost everything except an exhausted tranquility and the memory of pain.

 **Unique-free-reborn** , she thinks in tandem with the Maeshi. A new life-form, here before her: part-Maeshi, part-Bala. Not a symbiont. A creature that can survive alone.

Then the Maeshi symbiont sends her **Forget-ignore-avoid** , and the image of a human, of Earth, glimmering blue and beautiful. Earth, with its corporeal life-forms; Earth, home of a species intelligent enough to handle Maeshi symbionts.

It all makes sense now. _You never wanted a war._

The Maeshi child, waving.

Humans, dying ( _they don’t have to_ ).

**Create-repeat-evolve.**

Bala tilts her head back and looks at the Maeshi system’s alien star. She’ll never see the Sun again, but she made her peace with that. She always thought she would die in this war.

 _Evolve,_ she agrees.

This time, when the Maeshi engulfs her, she doesn’t resist.


End file.
